You will soon be presenting the market data dashboard of Carlsberg in your webinar at Week of Market Research. What is so new and special about it?   

Lea Margarete Schlue: The dashboards provide quick and easy access to the complex world of market data to those who want and need to be data-driven, but don't have the time or know-how to wade through the myriad Excel spreadsheets from Nielsen, piecing together small-scale information. At the same time, the dashboards provide certainty in the handling of the data, which makes users feel confident about the results. The simple dashboard setup communicates without ambiguity, so users gain a clear understanding of what they are looking at, filtering on and how to interpret it. The bottom line: data-based work and decision-making becomes natural at different operational levels – that's what makes the new reporting solution so special. 

Sign up for the webinar at Week of Market Research, on 10 May, at 14:00 hrs.   

Why does it help you to make better decisions? Which feature is crucial?   

Lea Margarete Schlue: The dashboards are tailored to fit specific use cases – this shortens the path to the required data and thus creates a faster and more stable basis for decision-making. More precisely, the dashboards combine previously decentralized figures from different tables into a direct logical context and essentially reduce the information to answer a specific set of questions. Users reach the information they are looking for without any detours and without having to console with third parties. Thanks to the user centric approach and use case individual setup, the data is easy to understand (clear color scheme, familiar symbols) and uncomplicated to adjust (simple filter functions). With just a few clicks, a meaningful, presentation-ready one-pager is created for constructive discussions and fact-based decisions. 

How does Carlsberg use the dashboard specifically? What surprising insights have been found as a result?   

Lea Margarete Schlue: The beer market in Germany is very much regionally shaped. This is not just a matter of preferences for specific types of beer (people in Bavaria like to drink wheat beer – just to name a classic) but goes right down to individual brands that are only sold in a limited geographical area. This means that at certain data levels, the cross-regional analysis makes no sense. Therefore, Carlsberg Germany benefits enormously from the interactive maps, which enable fast and intuitive regional filter settings (e.g. on Nielsen regions). For instance, the regional targeting of the data has shown that there are immense differences in price levels between eastern and western German states. One consequence could be: Shut down sales in certain regions and allocate sales resources where the company is more competitive. 

You combine weather data with beer consumption: are there correlations other than hot weather = more consumption?   

Lea Margarete Schlue: Temperature seems to play a minor role. Precipitation and sunshine are the more important indicators of beer consumption from a weather data perspective. One example: At Easter, the air in my home in southern Lower Saxony was still quite cold, but the sun was shining and there was no rain. Therefore, the beer by the Easter fire tasted pretty good (to me, at least). I assume that much less beer would have been sold if it had rained. 

In what other industries are market data dashboards of particular benefit?  

Lea Margarete Schlue: It's not so much a matter of industry, as it is a matter of data pool and the use case: Market data dashboards, such as the one for Carlsberg Germany, can provide a great advantage wherever you work with figures from different tables, at different levels, which only generate truly actionable insights when combined in a meaningful way. Example: Sales of a product category are declining in the overall market, but some competitors manage to grow – what is the reason? Direct, contextual access to the sales and promotions of individual products (down to SKU level), also using regional filters, can provide a quick, plausible explanation and inspire strategic considerations.  

Who should definitely not miss your webinar? 

Lea Margarete Schlue: The webinar is interesting for all people who want to see how online reporting solutions (such as interactive dashboards) can facilitate work with data using a real-life use case – not a demo. The example "Market data dashboards for Carlsberg Germany" makes a paradox point: Reducing complexity creates an increase in competence. Or to put it more simply: Less is more. And "more" is what you get in the webinar ... 

Sign up for the webinar at Week of Market Research, on 10 May, at 14:00 hrs. 

Lea Margarete Schlue (M.A. Communication Theory and Research) joined the SKOPOS Group in 2017 and combines many years of software expertise in Tableau with data know-how and special skills in dashboard usability and interaction design. As Visual Analytics Lead, she is responsible for the further development and quality assurance in the area of data visualization and reporting solutions at SKOPOS ELEMENTS. 

 

– published in German on marktforschung.de –